Saturday, January 02, 2010

Though I had supported Congressman Ron Paul for a long time, it wasn't until March 2007 that I mentioned him on this blog. Fast forwarding ten months, I then drove to New Hampshire twice to knock on doors for him. Back then I explained my rationale for supporting him:

And though the past year has seemed like a complete catastrophe when it comes to economic policy, my participation in the Ron Paul r3VOLution is paying dividends. Not only is Ron Paul getting airtime with the WSJ... even the LA Times' Don Lee admits he's getting some street cred with other pols:

For three decades, Texas congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul's extreme brand of libertarian economics consigned him to the far fringes even among conservatives. Not a few times, his views put him on the losing end of 434-1 votes on Capitol Hill.

No longer....

His warnings on deficits and inflation are now Republican mantras.

Though frankly, based on their prior performance... it's obvious that much of that is disingenuous.

The article elaborates on the sincere motives of My Congressman:

Paul is a disciple of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian theorist born at the end of the 19th century who contended that government intervention in an economy would fail because free markets were better at allocating resources and fueling growth.

Having lived through Germany's devastating hyperinflation in the early 1920s, which helped pave the way for Hitler, Mises wrote long before the Great Depression that over-generous credit policies would encourage excessive borrowing, creating a boom and then a bust.

But in all seriousness, these are extremely important issues. I'm trying to gain a better grasp of them by reading RPs most recent book, End the Fed. If you're interested in improving the economy, I encourage you to read it. Whether you agree or not, at least you'll see the public policy debate - over issues such as bailouts - that Washington's Political Class has long tried to ignore.